Families of the 1989 tragedy’s victims will pack London’s High Court to hear the accidental death rulings struck from the records

Ninety-six inquest verdicts are expected to be quashed today in a new step towards justice for football fans who died at Hillsborough.

Families of the 1989 tragedy’s victims will pack London’s High Court to hear the accidental death rulings struck from the records.

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Igor Judge, and two other justices sitting at London’s Royal Courts of Justice will listen to the application to overturn the verdicts - a move approved by the Attorney General Dominic Grieve QC.

Hillsborough disaster families are still unclear about when fresh inquests would be heard, although the judges could set out a basic timetable.

Among the relatives in court will be mother and campaigner Anne Williams, who lost her son Kevin on the Leppings Lane terraces.

The 60-year-old has twice taken her fight for a new inquest to the European courts and recently received the news she has terminal cancer.

Ms Williams, from Formby, Merseyside, is desperate for new inquest dates to be scheduled so she can get justice for her son before she dies.

She told the Mirror: “It’s for days like today that I feel all the fighting was worth it.

“I’ve always said my son didn’t die in an accident: he was unlawfully killed.

“The last time we came out of the High Court it was in agony after our hopes in the judicial review were shattered.

“This time, hopefully, we’ll leave with big smiles on our faces.

“I’m not getting excited until I hear the words those verdicts are quashed as I’ve been let down so many times.

"But when it happens, it will be amazing.

“It’s about time the blame is put where it belongs onto the police, where Lord Justice Taylor put it in the first place.

“Because of my illness, I don’t know if I’ll see the end result played out in front of me, but I don’t want to know timescales, or how long I’ve got.

“I’m getting a good quality of care. I don’t want to be counting down the days. I’m coping and we’ll see this through.”

Yesterday, in the House of Commons, Liverpool MP Steve Rotheram called on the government to financially support any future legal costs for the families.

And in one of the clearest indication yet of Westminster help for the relatives, Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said: “I think it might be helpful to say that my department is very mindful of the financial pressures faced by the Hillsborough families.

“We all recognise the very difficult circumstances they have been through and they are certainly in our consideration.”

Liverpool MP Steve Rotheram said: “The wheels of justice turn slowly in Britain but they are beginning to gather momentum.

“This is just the beginning of a process that will see one of the greatest injustices in the last century, put right and those really responsible for Hillsborough held to account.’’

Margaret Aspinall, the chair of Hillsborough Family Support Group, who lost her son, James, 18, will also be attending the court, and said: “I am feeling quite positive.

“There’s no decision they can make except to quash the verdicts.

“We have been disappointed in the past, but now everybody has be seen to be doing the right thing, and that is to quash the verdict.